Insights A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival Noises Off! The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced on the Festival’s stages. Insights is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C. Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director. Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print Insights, as long as you do not remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival. For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street Cedar City, Utah 84720 435-586-7880 www.bard.org. Cover photo: Fredi Olster (top), Libby George, David Ivers, and Henson Keys in Noises Off!, 2000. Contents Information on the Play Synopsis 4 CharactersNoises Off! 5 About the Playwrights 6 Scholarly Articles on the Play Quiet In the Wings 8 I’ll Admit It: Act 2 Is Perfect 10 Noises Off? – Nothing On – Everything Goes 12 Utah Shakespeare Festival 3 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Synopsis: Noises Off! It is only hours before the opening of a British adult farce, Nothing On, and the touring company is hurriedly running through a final dress rehearsal in the Grand Theatre, Weston- SuperMare, before the first audience arrives. Act One During the first act, we are an audience to this production of a play within a play. The Nothing On cast is loveable, but mainly inept; however, we cheer for them under our breath and hope that they can pull it together and get the show on the road. Dotty, the actor playing Mrs. Clackett, can’t remember her entrances and exits. Garry, the male love interest, can’t remember his lines. And Brooke, playing Vicki, the female lead, is con- stantly posing and primping, without any understanding of what the play is about or what she is doing. Trying to pull this all together into some semblance of a presentable show is the director, Lloyd Dallas, who is sitting in the darkened auditorium shouting out directions and trying to get everybody ready for opening. Act 2, however, dashes all our hopes. Act Two For this act, we, the audience, are sitting backstage; the entire set has been turned 180 degrees. We can hear the actors performing out front, but what we see is the back side of the scenery flats, the stage manager trying to keep the action flowing and everybody happy, and the various antics of the actors offstage between their exits and entrances. The play has been on the road for one month now, and relationships between cast members, as well as the quality of Nothing On have deteriorated. Garry and Dotty are in the middle of an unhappy love affair. Poppy, the assistant stage manager is pregnant; and Selsdon Mowbray, an actor in his late sixties, is trying to stay sober between scenes. Add to this, a visit by director Lloyd, who is there first of all to comfort his “overly excited” lover, Brooke, and second to try and save his play from total disaster. Most of the company is in a continual state of agitation, and this disorder is carrying over into the play, causing missed entrances, flubbed lines, and general hilarity. Act 3 is even more frenetic. Act Three It is a month later again, and the tour is reaching an end. We, the audience, are out front again, watching a performance of Nothing On that has reached the point of complete and hilar- ious deterioration. The business of performing the show has become subordinate to the business of solving personal problems. Dotty refuses to come out of her dressing room. Garry is now drinking Selsdon’s whiskey. Scenery collapses, and props explode. Practical jokes have become common, and actors are now taking verbal, and sometimes physical, cracks at each other both backstage and on stage. Normal rules of logic and response don’t apply anymore. Ultimately, however, they carry off the show—in some semblance. The unhappy band of actors manages to get to the last line, spoken by Selsdon: “When all around is strife and uncer- tainty, there’s nothing like . (takes the plate of sardines) . a good old-fashioned plate of curtain!” Curtain. 4 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Characters: Noises Off! LLOYD DALLAS: The director of Nothing On. DOTTY OTLEY: Playing the role of Mrs. Clackett in Nothing On. GARRY LEJEUNE: Playing the role of Roger Tramplemain. BROOKE ASHTON: Playing the role of Vicki. FREDERICK FELLOWES: Playing the roles of Philip Brent and of a Sheikh. BELINDA BLAIR: Playing the role of Flavia Brent. SELSDON MOWBRAY: Playing the role of a Burglar. TIM ALLGOOD: The company and stage manager. POPPY NORTON-TAYLOR: The assistant stage manager. Utah Shakespeare Festival 5 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 About the Playwright: Michael Frayn Michael Frayn, whose work is often compared to that of Anton Chekhov for its focus on humorous family situations and its insights into society, is equally at home writing newspa- per columns, novels, television productions, and stage plays. However, his greatest notoriety and critical success has been from his long-running and internationally successful stage farce, Noises Off (1982). This and numerous other plays have been popular with audiences who enjoy their sharp wit and humor and by critics who enjoy their satiric social commentary. An apartment above a liquor store in Mill Hall on the northwestern edge of London was Frayn’s first home, but his parents moved to Ewell on the southern edge of London soon after he was born. His father, Thomas Allen Frayn, was a sales representative for an asbestos com- pany; his mother, Violet Alice Lawson Frayn, had been a shop assistant. It was while he lived in Ewell that he attended Kingston Grammar School and got his first taste of education and of social interaction, earning a reputation as someone who was quick to make jokes at the expense of others. “After leaving school in 1952, Frayn was conscripted into the Royal Army and sent to a Russian interpretership course at Cambridge. He also studied in Moscow for several weeks, returning with the opinion that the so-called Cold War was ridiculous. East/West relations would later become a subject of satire in many of his works” (Edited by Stanley Weintraub, Dictionary of Literary Biography [Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Company, 1982], 172). In 1954, after being discharged from the army, he returned to Cambridge to study phi- losophy under Ludwig Wittgenstein, who influenced his thoughts and writing dramatically. After graduation he worked as a newspaper reporter , columnist, and critic for the Manchester Guardian and The Observer in London. His social satire from this time has been collected in four books, The Day of the Dog (1962), The Book of Fub (1963), On the Outskirts (1964), and At Bay in Gear Street (1967). “Frayn’s columns are social spoofs, often written in dialogue form and with a cast of fic- tional characters. The pieces usually take a popular trend or human foible and stretch it to ludicrous proportions. His pet peeves are liberal-minded hypocrisy, middle-class conven- tion, and class snobbery” (Weintraub, 173). His first novel, The Tin Men (1965), won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction; his second, The Russian Interpreter, the Hawthornden Prize. These were followed by Towards the End of Morning (1967), A Very Private Life (1968), and Alphabetical Order (1975). Frayn’s first dramatic works were television plays, both aired by the BBC: Jamie, on a Flying Visit (1968) and Birthday (1969). These led to his first stage play, The Two of Us, which opened in the West End on 30 July 1970. His second play, The Sandboy, opened the next year at the Greenwich Theatre. Frayn then shifted gears again, focusing for four years on novels and a weekly BBC com- edy series, Beyond a Joke. His next play, Alphabetical Order did not appear until 1975. He followed this with four documentary films for the BBC: Imagine a City Called Berlin (1975), Vienna: The Mask of Gold (1977), Three Streets in the Country (1979), and The Long Straight (1980). Frayn describes these documentaries as “kind of filmed essays, really, with a lot of history in them” (Weintraub, 175). His next play, Donkeys’ Year (1976) was staged in London’s Globe Theatre and was named best comedy of the year by the Society of West End Theatres. Clouds, his fifth play, debuted 6 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 only a month later at the Hampstead Theatre Club in London, followed by Liberty Hall and Make and Break in 1980. However, it was with Noises Off that Frayn achieved commercial and critical success in the United States. The play opened in February 1982 at the Lyric Hammersmith in England and quick- ly transferred to the Savoy Theatre, where it passed the 1000th performance mark. It opened in America at Broadway’s Brooks Atkinson Theater in December of 1983 to rapturous reviews. It has since been produced around the world, including stints in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, France, Belgium, and Scandinavia.